The Seven Stages Of Aspirational Produce Shopping

2. “I could be the kind of person who owned and prepared sugar snap peas.”

3. “Starting today, I’m going to fill my crisper drawers with a variety of glossy and vibrant-looking vegetables. Not because I’m going to start eating only vegetables, I’ll still eat bread and cheese and things, I just want to make more room in my life for beautiful produce, I’m just always going to put my food on a beautiful plate, and eat salads with shredded cabbage that I have shredded myself and not bought pre-shredded and starting to brown out of a plastic shell from Trader Joe’s. Beautiful tea leaf salads, and followed by entire roasts, or haunches, or things, and I’ll make sauces, and I’ll sop those sauces up with crusty bread, but I’ll never eat half a thing of stale bread over the sink because I refuse to empty my dishwasher, and I’ll do things like have a recipe for sugar snap peas, and think about all the things I want to cook all week before I go grocery shopping, and then I’ll make them. Between my will and my actions there will be no difference. What I want to do, I will do. What I don’t want to do, I won’t.”

4. “One bunch of sugar snap peas, please.”

5. “Ah, I see the sugar snap peas glistening up at me, as cheerful as damnit, from the vegetable drawer. Hello, sugar snap peas. How fond I am of you. How I’m looking forward to the time we’re going to spend together. I don’t need you just now – all I want to do right now is eat whatever is already pre-made in my refrigerator – but as soon as I have a few minutes, and the kitchen is really clean enough to work in, I’m going to do something very special with you.”

6. “Oh, God, the peas are still in there. I’ve got to do something with those peas. If I did something with them tonight, maybe they wouldn’t taste withled and shrivered. It might not be too late.”

7. “Well, time to throw out everything that’s gross in the fridge so I’ve got space for all the gorgeous produce I’m sure I’ll pick up at the store today. Yes sir, things are really going to be different around here from here on out.”